Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper was the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He won the 2011 Canadian federal election with 39.62% of the vote and 166 out of 308 seats giving the Conservatives a majority government. The election was started after the Liberal Party of Canada put forward a motion of Non Confidence on the alleged grounds of contempt of parliament.

Harper largely abandoned social issues and ultimately lost in a landslide to Justin Trudeau of the Liberals in the 2015 election. Trudeau is son of the famous former prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau.

Contents

History

Stephen Harper was born on April 30, 1959 in Toronto, Ontario. He received a master's degree in economics from the University of Calgary.

As a young man, Harper briefly worked as an intern in Ottawa as an assistant to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. However he eventually grew frustrated and disillusioned with the party, which he saw as overly pragmatic, insufficiently conservative, and hostile towards the interests of western Canada.

Returning to Alberta, he joined forces with conservative activist Preston Manning and helped found the Reform Party of Canada, a "true" conservative party designed to challenge the dominance of the Progressive Conservatives and then-PC Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Harper proceeded to be elected to Parliament in 1993 as a Reform Party of Canada member to represent the riding of Calgary West. In 1997 he declined to run for re-election, however, becoming frustrated with parliamentary politics and Manning's leadership of the Reform Party.

Subsequently, he became the head of the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), a conservative advocacy group in Canada.

Recent history

When Manning resigned as leader of Reform in 2000 the party renamed itself the Canadian Alliance and was briefly led by Stockwell Day. Day was an unpopular leader, though the party did make some parliamentary gains during his leadership. When he stepped down in 2002 Harper re-entered politics to replace him, and was subsequently elected the new leader of the Canadian Alliance (CA).

As leader, Harper was instrumental in instigating a merger between the CA and his old rivals, the Progressive Conservative Party, which was now led by Peter MacKay, a man who was open to the idea of joining forces to help "unite the right" in Canada, and create a party powerful enough to defeat the entrenched Liberal Party of Canada. Harper's eagerness to merge led him to compromise several key principles of the Canadian Alliance, however. In order to win the moderate MacKay's support, Harper "softened" many of the CA's positions on issues.

Prime Minister

In an election in 2006, the Conservative Party of Canada elected enough members of parliament to unseat Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin and form a minority government. Stephen Harper became the Prime Minister on February 6, 2006.

Harper's Conservative Government largely followed his election platform of five key priorities. They were:

Federal Accountability

Tax Reform (including dropping the Canadian VAT, the GST from 7% to 5%)

Crime

Child Care

Health Care

In addition, Harper focused his energy on rebuilding the Canadian Forces and the War in Afghanistan.

In 2007 Harper promised Canadian farmers over $1 billion Canadian in farm subsidies but at the same time promised to end the Wheat Board of Canada's sales monopoly in Western Canada,[2] (a government group that manipulates the prices of wheat and barley through supply management). Some farmers believed this would cost the Canadian farming industry billions of dollars in lost revenues while others felt the industry would benefit by allowing farmers in the West to market and sell their produce as they saw fit; just as farmers in the east were allowed to do. The United States also wanted the Wheat Board of Canada removed from power because it claims price fixing is unfair to free-trade. Wheat exports to the United States accounted for only 10% of Canada's wheat production.

A fixed election date measure was passed, setting the next general election for October, 2009. However, the measure was not binding, and on September 7, 2008, Harper advised the Governor-General to call a general election for October 14, 2008, one year early. The Conservatives won the election, increasing their total number of seats, however they did not win an outright majority of the seats in the House of Commons. This left open the possibility of the remaining parties forming a coalition and displacing the Conservative government, and an unofficial Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition was formed a month after the election; however, Harper successfully had parliament suspended until February 2009 before the coalition could bring forth a vote of no confidence. Liberal leader Stephane Dion resigned his position after the suspension of parliament, and succeeding leader Michael Ignatieff has distanced himself from the coalition, meaning that the Harper government was theoretically safe for the foreseeable future (although not truly safe, like any minority government).

The Conservatives won a major victory in the 2011 election, capturing majorities in parliament.[3] However, the Conservatives then lost the 2015 election when the Liberals, now led by Justin Trudeau, came from their third-place position to return to power. As a result, Harper announced following the election that he would be stepping down as Conservative leader and has requested an interim leader to serve until a leadership election can be held.[4]

Gun laws

Harper's government passed several pro-gun laws. In 2012, Bill C-19 became law, which abolished the long gun registry and ordered the destruction of existing records.[5][6] In addition, Bill C-42 became law in 2015, which removed several bureaucratic regulations in its gun laws.[7][8]

Views

Mr. Harper is a member of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a conservative evangelical Christian group, and is generally considered to have socially conservative views on most issues. During the 2003 Iraq War his party was the only one in Canada that supported the United States and George W. Bush. In his past careers, he has also been strongly critical of taxation.

As Prime Minister, however, Harper has governed much more pragmatically. Canadian liberals often accuse Harper of being "right wing" and too similar to George W. Bush and American Republicans; analogies which are used to inflame anti-American sentiment in Canada. In the 2006 election, Harper thus sought to distance himself from some of his strongly conservative positions of the past, usually by vowing to not pursue a radical social agenda while in office, but instead focus on certain economic priorities. Mr. Harper is one of the only people in Canada who supported the intervention in Libya, and also is one of few people in Canada in support of importing American aircraft, in lieu of producing Canadian fighters, out of a loyalty to American business.

During his tenure as Prime Minister, Harper did nothing against abortion (which in Canada is completely legal) and nothing against same-sex "marriage" and same-sex adoption.